How we built the Top 100 Fastest-Growing AI Teams list and key takeaways from the featured companies.
Investments in AI are growing quickly and have become a global-scale amplifier, gaining traction in business, products, and social innovation over the recent years. The development of advanced data science methods combined with vast amounts of data have already started to work its way into industries globally. But which companies are currently leading the way?
At Vectice, we are passionate about data science and decided to explore the AI landscape. For 6 months we continuously monitored more than 2,500 American enterprises and how their data science divisions were developing over time. The outcome of our study is a list of the “Top 100 Fastest Growing AI Teams”
Let’s take a deeper look at what we explored!
How we did it
The overarching goal became to provide a reference work for data science practitioners to explore and filter through the fastest-growing enterprises and gain insights about their AI divisions. With the Top 100 Fastest Growing AI Teams we are issuing the latest updates on companies’ Team Size, Growth Rate, and Management Ratio. Let’s explore the three metrics further:
Team Size
Based on the number of team members, the companies total data science team size has been divided into three categories:
- Small: 20 - 49 Team members
- Medium: 50 - 250 Team members
- Large: +250 Team members
Growth Rate
The growth rate is based on a three running month basis and is measured by the growth of the total number of individual contributors and managers.
The growth rate is categorized from High to Very high to Exceptional.
Management Ratio
The management ratio is an indication of proximity to the top management and is calculated by the total number of managers / total size of the team. Depending on the amount of managers compared to individual contributors, the companies are divided into two types of organizations:
- Vertical organizations often have smaller teams and layers of middle management.
- Horizontal organizations often have larger teams with more autonomous employees.
Both types of organizations have their strengths and weaknesses and depend on what work environment is preferred. Companies are categorized as:
- Relatively vertical (Higher management ratio)
- Average
- Relatively horizontal (Lower management ratio)
Key takeaways
Out of the 2,500 largest US companies studied, 965 companies had an AI team of more than 20 employees. 541 companies that had an AI team of more than 20 employees experienced positive growth in their AI team over the past 3 months.
The fastest-growing teams were found in the technology and healthcare industries, followed by retail and finance/insurance. This indicates that enterprises across a variety of industries are seeing the value in AI and are investing in the technology.
With nearly 500 AI experts hired over the past 3 months, Microsoft is the company leading the growth charts (both in percentage and number of new hires). In numbers of new hires, this represents a lead by an 8 fold to the second-fastest company: Kaiser Permanente.
The two automotive companies GM and Ford are also investing heavily, they are part of the top 10 in terms of the number of new hires.
Looking for new opportunities?
Whether you are an aspiring data scientist or an experienced AI leader looking for your next big job move, the top 100 list gives you clear insights to find the best fit within companies investing the most in AI.
Furthermore, you will have an understanding of the organizational structure and team size you can expect in the company you are looking at. We even made it easy for you to get in touch with your prospecting company and added a direct link to their careers site - your next application is only a click away.
The study was conducted by Alexander Gorgin and Remy Thellier
